I feel mean and nasty.
I cuss out everyone I talk to behind their backs, saying
'That asshole!'
Or,
'What a pussy!'
For no reason but that the caffeine wears me thin.
My only child-friend is Bubba the dog, who gives me those eyes,
'I've never tried watermelon before, please Jilly can I try it!?'
And, of course I say yes.
Dogs love you even when their food comes late.
He's a pit bull. I feel someone of importance when I walk down the street with him, you know,
'Move it, coming through with my friend the tan pitbull with the sad eyes! We don't have all day! We have to eat watermelon!'
He lays in the sun and I think of things.
'Why is he afraid of water?
Why does he step so daintily over obstructions in his path?
What does he really think of those
cats he chases...does he want them to sit down and eat watermelon with us?'
I want someone to eat watermelon with us.
Danny is at work, and the sun is high in the powder blue backdrop it calls home.
We want a watermelon friend.
Jun 9, 2016
Jun 9, 2016 at 6:06 PM UTC
The bright green leaves picked at by tiny fingers
and your mother taking your boyfriend
red blood
it must have turned from her shirt to your eyes
the night you found them drunk.
Now, it is 30 years later,
those same eyes focused on mine,
Shouting at you in the parking lot of the hospital
to take your badge and burn it
'You aren't my social worker.'
Playing with my life as she did yours.
Me, learning.
How we crawl into the crevices of a mind, crouching in wait
to find a dent
a scratch to pick apart
and send screaming into the light.
We only want the best.
Though, is it for us, or for them?
We never know.
Or do we?
At night, I think of how we are the same
Twenty-four years apart,
still jumping from man to man like dragonflies,
our colorful wings, torn and glistening.
I found mine, but lose his bright orange youth nightly.
And love is never further away than the next place we look,
but always at just the tip of our tongues,
if we use them right.
I remember at twelve,
practicing break-ups in the bathroom every night.
'I'm sorry, I know you love me, but I have other commitments.'
You were the one with the damage, and it crept over me
a tarp over a clear blue pool on a winter afternoon.
Dead leaves crowding the corners,
tiny bee carcasses: my insecurities piling over the top.
'I'm just not good enough, I must do something about this weight.'
All of your ways boiling over into mine.
The morning I got my first period, you laughed with my sister at my excitement, instead of leaping for joy, and I watched the two of you giggle, my cheeks growing red with anger and shame.
'Aren't I now a woman?'
'Aren't I now yours?'
You always pointed at the corners when I cleaned:
'Do You see that dust? It isn't enough...it's just not enough.'
I've had enough, mother.
The wind blows smoothly into the arms you gave me.
As I write, I am met with a penetrating silence.
This is enough.
It has to be.
Jun 9, 2016
Jun 9, 2016 at 3:19 AM UTC
Its about noon on Wednesday
UCLA had a shooting
Fox news reports
that the kids are still
trapped in the classrooms
waiting
Now that it is contained,
the excitement has died down
from our side,
but the kids there will always be
The guy in the science building that heard the doorknob wiggle as bullets wailed in the distance.
The girl that peed herself because she was afraid she wouldn't make it to her sister's Quincinera.
The teacher who never thought he'd see the day.
We're left with our hands up,
'Is this it?'
Is this what we're left with?
A man, full in his head,
bored at his hands
and a gun?
'Is this it?'
and two sets of parents, who won't see their children grow to be the ones who walked at graduation.
'Is this it?'
Jun 1, 2016
Jun 1, 2016 at 3:38 PM UTC
35 people in a row
and 2 that go where no one knows
upon a beach of golden sands
with elderly grandmas holding hands
and giant birds
and ferocious sharks
and dogs that leave their golden marks
in vicious depths
dead children play
never to see
another day
and I with you at the very top
floating 'til we never stop
opening eyes to look at stars
forgetting all the mangy cars
and the bars
and the bars
May 30, 2016
May 30, 2016 at 10:17 PM UTC
Thinking of the time they did coke in my apartment,
and they suddenly realized
I was beautiful
I would have been before, too,
but you were always worried about your tutor
and the white sludge
dripping down the back of your throat
tap tap tapping
on your brain, that couldn't take it anymore, but did.
Now, you live with a woman who works with children
they hear the tap tap tapping
on their brain
and they would have been beautiful, anyway.
You are somewhere with no answers to questions,
no weeping
no laughter
and the tap tap tapping on your brain.
You are old, and you cannot see the sky.
May 30, 2016
May 30, 2016 at 10:07 PM UTC
a dog barks to start a fight with bubba
and he gets
mean like an ant who's
sugars' been stolen and I tell him
that's an ugly dog
when ugly people populate the planet, I get mad,
but I don't bite their heads off.
He got really calm after that
and I waved at a gardener
as if to say,
'It's okay,
it won't happen again.'
May 30, 2016
May 30, 2016 at 10:01 PM UTC
I slept with Danny last night. He doesn't know how good he is,
he thinks he has to learn, but I look at him on top of me
and how his **** sticks straight up, how it hasn't been masturbated into submission
and I think, man
I need to learn.
May 30, 2016
May 30, 2016 at 9:56 PM UTC
It's Friday night,
a still blue dark eyed sky
a band plays
It's years removed from the time I wrote about
the bells and how they swing
in the tower to my left
I still hear them
how they cling cling BANG
and I am with you
and I am alone
tomorrow is coming
and in two years I'll be here with the bells
cling cling BOOM
and there will be a woman or a man
sipping on coffee
or speaking
softly, and the bells
cling cling BANG
May 30, 2016
May 30, 2016 at 9:54 PM UTC
I walked into a sandwich shop with a woman who believed in meditation and growling at the dirt in the desert. We saw a well dressed black man and we were 5,280 miles away from him, but he had a nice suit, so I said so.
May 30, 2016
May 30, 2016 at 9:18 PM UTC
In these hours
I look at your face
I think
We two, separated, so long.
You with your drugs and *** miniscule friends.
Celebrating a pale youth down bright corridors.
Me stagnating inside a corner or a cabinet of a deep red mind.
Brushing away cobwebs for years,
finally, to make room for you.
When we met again,
On the beach
Or on a ***** sidewalk
Or in the basement
Or with you beside me
With patiently thick fingers
Me screaming
**** me, **** me
It wasn't enough that time to ease the physical pain.
Years of ******** standing slouching smoking,
The complete erasure of my past coming in waves and then, suddenly,
Creeping back into the dark next to the spiders:
A man here, taking me for granted,
A dress with a tear near the knee,
An empty space
A mother placing her daughter tightly away in a large granite box a top a musty gray shelf and waiting outside with the key.
And me inside
And me inside
And the music, a century of loneliness and terror
others and their pain and my own
It all crashed down yesterday
Aha!
I've got you now!
May 30, 2016
May 30, 2016 at 8:24 PM UTC